Canadian neuro-health technology firm NeuroCatch has partnered with the University of Calgary’s Dr. Michael Esser for the use of its brain function assessment system in a paediatric concussion study.

Being conducted at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, the clinical study will leverage the NeuroCatch Platform to assess brain function changes in children who suffered mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI).

NeuroCatch Platform is an objective neuro-physiological brain function assessment system that can be used to measure event-related potentials (ERPs).

It offers an assessment of three ERPs – auditory sensation, basic attention and cognitive processing.

The system comes with a portable hardware and software system, which captures electroencephalograph (EEG) data and automatically extracts ERP brainwave information.

This information is then converted into a comprehensible clinical report, said NeuroCatch.

NeuroCatch CEO Kirk Fisher said: “Traditional brain monitoring systems can be more cumbersome and take upwards of an hour or more from start to finish, while the NeuroCatch Platform assessment is done in less than ten minutes.

“Our goal is to make brain function monitoring more accessible and more commonplace for people, by making our device available to clinicians and researchers throughout Canada.”

The concussion study will be performed in up to 105 children who are aged 8-18 years. It will enrol individuals with persistent mTBI symptoms, those who had a quick recovery, children who had multiple mTBIs and also those who have never suffered a concussion.

Pediatric neurologist Esser said: “The science of measuring brain function changes through ERPs has been around for decades, but there hasn’t been much research around how these brain function components change in children, particularly those with mTBI and paediatric concussions.

“We are excited to use this technology as a means to safely compare neurophysiological markers of brain function changes in children with mTBI, and help researchers shed some light on why some children recover faster from traumatic brain injuries than others.”